Get ‘em All / みな殺しの歌より 拳銃よさらば! / ‘Minagoroshi no uta' yori kenju-yo saraba! (From the ‘Song of Annihilation’-Farewell, Gun!) (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #78

Hiroshi Mizuhara and Akemi Kita

 

This Toho crime flick was a vehicle for Hiroshi Mizuhara* (1935-78), a pop singer who had just become hugely popular at the time. He plays Kyosuke, a young man fresh out of prison, who goes to stay with his brother, Kozo (Akihiko Hirata, the one-eyed scientist from the original Godzilla), and his wife, Mamiko (Yukiko Shimazaki). However, it’s not long before Kozo is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run – something which fails to make much impression on Mamiko, who observes that she ‘can’t dance the mambo with a dead man’ and assumes she will simply switch brothers. Kyosuke, though, has other ideas, and begins investigating his brother’s death. 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

First, he pays a visit to Kozo’s best friend, Tsubota (Tatsuya Nakadai), a crippled ex-boxer. Not wanting to shatter Kyosuke’s illusions, Tsubota decides not to tell him that Kozo was involved in a bank robbery with himself and five other men and that the loot has gone missing. Kyosuke leaves, still under the impression that Kozo was an honest citizen, but then he finds a coin locker key in his brother’s wallet. When he opens the locker, he’s surprised to find a revolver inside; later, he gets in a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Namioka (Jerry Fujio). During the scuffle, his jacket falls open, revealing the gun, and Namioka immediately backs down. Realising his new-found power, Kyosuke orders Namioka to get down on all fours and ‘squeal like a pig.’ He's delighted when Namioka does just that, and the power of the pistol goes to Kyosuke’s head as he sets about getting revenge on the men who murdered his brother. 

 

Mizuhara and Nakadai

 

The director of this film, Eizo Sugawa, had directed Tatsuya Nakadai in the excellent The Beast Must Die the previous year and had also written the script for A Dangerous Hero (1957) featuring Nakadai. I couldn’t help feeling it a pity that this third and final collaboration should be this, rather than a sequel to Beast – a film which introduced a fascinating Ripley-like antihero to Japanese cinema and left things wide open for a part two. Having said that, Get ‘em All is a well-made, entertaining and stylish noir.

 

Hiroshi Mizuhara

In my opinion, Mizuhara gives a good performance but doesn’t quite cut it as a film star. He appeared in around 20 movies (not always in the lead) but his career was harmed by his alcoholism and gambling addiction. It’s a little strange to see him in the starring role instead of Nakadai (who receives special billing), but Nakadai always relished these slightly odd parts; in fact, it’s one of a number of ‘bad leg’ roles he would play throughout his career. However, perhaps the role had another attraction for him as he had actually flirted with boxing before becoming an actor, but decided he didn’t like being punched in the face and gave it up. There’s a scene here in which he really goes at it with a punching bag and it certainly looks like he had some moves; indeed, he later got into a scrap with Kinnosuke Nakamura in real life, and I think it was Tetsuro Tanba who said that Nakadai was the best at fighting. Talking of Tanba, he’s also good here as the toughest of the gang members. 

 

Tetsuro Tanba

 

Also notable among the cast are Kurosawa favourite Seiji Miyaguchi in one of his trademark downtrodden-loser roles, and Kyoko Kishida (the Woman in the Dunes) as the girlfriend of another gang member. 

 

Seiji Miyaguchi

 

Kyoko Kishida

Get ‘em All was based on the novel Minagoroshi no uta by Haruhiko Oyabu, who had also written The Beast Must Die. In the original, the criminal gang are not bank robbers, but are involved in a black market morphine racket. While the loose adaptation here is nothing special in terms of story, director Sugawa and his screenwriter, Shuji Terayama – later an art-house director known for films such as Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets – inject it with some nice touches of black humour, and emphasize the very obvious Freudian symbolism of the pistol. Indeed, there’s an implication here that Japanese men had been, in a sense, emasculated after the war by the occupying Americans; this is made most explicit when Kyosuke is nearly shot by a kid dressed as a cowboy who has got hold of his gun and claims to be… ‘Burt Lancaster’!

 * not 'Mizuwara'

Akanishi Kakita /赤西蠣太 aka Capricious Young Man (1936)

Obscure Japanese Film #77

Chiezo Kataoka

The year is 1671. Akanishi Kakita (Chiezo Kataoka) is a low-ranking samurai retainer described in the following way in Naoya Shiga’s original story: ‘His features were of the so-called ugly man type, and he had an uncouth accent. In every respect, he seemed the typical back-country samurai.’ He also likes to play shogi (Japanese chess) on his own and prefers eating sweets to drinking saké. These quirks, together with his unremarkable appearance, mean that his fellow samurai view him as a no-account oddball. However, his apparent defects serve him well as he is the last person anyone would suspect of being a spy – which is what he actually is. Though he apparently serves the daimyo Daté Hyobu (Michisaburo Segawa), his real master is the lord of Shiroishi, who has ordered him to infiltrate Hyobu’s household in order to gather information on the Daté clan’s intentions, especially those of their senior retainer, the evil-tempered Kai Harada (also played by Chiezo Kataoka), as they suspect Harada of planning an attack.*

 

Kataoka as Kai Harada

At one point, Kakita’s mission is endangered when he falls ill, suffering from severe stomach pain, which he believes is caused by his intestines having become twisted into a knot. He slices his own stomach open, unravels his guts, and sews himself back up again (this occurs off-screen for some reason). Having recovered a few days later, he then faces another problem – he needs to return to his real master to deliver his report, but how can he quit the Daté household without arousing suspicion? At the suggestion of his friend and fellow spy, Masujiro (Kensaku Hara), he writes a love letter to a beautiful young woman, Sazanami (Mineko Mori). When she rejects him, his apparent embarrassment will provide a plausible reason for his abrupt departure. However, she turns out to be a perceptive woman who has noticed his finer qualities… 

Akanishi Kakita is based on a 1917 short story of the same name by Naoya Shiga (1883-1971), a major literary figure in Japan. The story can be found in English translation in The Paper Door and Other Stories; as it’s only 17 pages long, writer-director Mansaku Itami (1900-1946) had to add some material in order to create a feature-length movie. Itami was the mentor to the great screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto. In his book Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I, Hashimoto paints a picture of Itami as a remarkable cinematic talent whose career was cut short when he contracted tuberculosis, which eventually led to his early death. Intriguingly, Mansaku Itami was also the father of another ill-fated director, Juzo Itami (1933-1997).

Mansaku Itami made his debut as director in 1928 and directed 22 films, only six of which survive in more or less complete form. These include Atarashiki tsuchi (The Samurai’s Daughter, 1937), a German-Japanese co-production co-directed by Arnold Fanck, and Kyojinden (The Giant, 1938), a version of Les Misérables and his last film as director. He also wrote the screenplay for Hiroshi Inagaki’s The Life of Matsu the Untamed (1943), remade several times, most notably by Inagaki himself as The Rickshaw Man (1958), starring Toshiro Mifune and Hideko Takamine. 

The young Takashi Shimura

 

I’m not quite sure that Akanishi Kakita holds up as a forgotten masterpiece. The film is not very well-paced, and the use of western-style music for the soundtrack feels out of place at times, although it should be remembered that Japan had only just abandoned the silent film in 1936. However, there is some occasionally striking camerawork, such as the overhead shot of the two samurai walking in the rain with umbrellas at the beginning and a later tracking shot of a line of samurai sitting down in the seiza position. Itami also makes excellent use of repetition for comic effect when Kakita and his neighbour, a fellow retainer (Takashi Shimura) go back and forth trying to get rid of a noisy cat that’s keeping them both awake, and in a later scene when a senior samurai keeps bribing his servant with saké to go out in foul weather to gather information. These scenes are not present in the original, nor is the scene in which Kakita disguises himself as a monk in order to give his pursuers the slip, and  they show real inventiveness on the part of Itami while being perfectly in keeping with the comic tone of the original story. No wonder, then, that Naoya Shiga himself was pleased when he saw the final film.  

 

The star of this film, Chiezo Kataoka (1903-83), is best-remembered for his leading roles in 13 Assassins (1963) and two Tomu Uchida films, Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (1955) and Hero of the Red Light District, aka A Killing in Yoshiwara (1960). Kataoka was clearly an extremely versatile actor, and he’s so good in his two opposing roles here that you could easily watch this film and not realise that it’s the same man playing Kakita and Harada, and not just because he’s made up with bushy eyebrows and pimple on his nose as Kakita – the voices of the two characters are also entirely different. 

Akanishi Kakita was named by Akira Kurosawa as one of his favourite films and later remade for television from Itami’s original script by Kon Ichikawa, who had worked as an assistant director to Itami as a young man. 

The print I saw looks like a VHS transfer and there are missing frames in one scene where intertitles have been used to fill in the gaps. It’s not great quality, although it does improve as the film goes on. However, surely Akanishi Kakita has sufficient cultural value to be worth a proper restoration. Why anyone thought it necessary to give this film the English title of Capricious Young Man is something of a mystery though.

*Kai Harada was later portrayed sympathetically by Tatsuya Nakadai in The Fir Tree Remains.

The Law of Hell / 地獄の掟 / Jigoku no okite (1982)

Obscure Japanese Film #76

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

This TV remake of the 1971 film known in English as Inn of Evil, which also starred Tatsuya Nakadai, was very much a family affair for the actor. Based on a Shugoro Yamamoto story entitled ‘Fukagawa Anrakutei’, the scripts for both were written by Nakadai’s wife, Yasuko Miyazaki, under her pen name of Tomoe Ryu. The other important personal connection for Nakadai is that most of the cast were students from his acting school, Mumeijuku (a notable exception is Hideo Murota, who plays the mysterious drunk portrayed by Shintaro Katsu in the earlier film). 

 

Nakadai was approaching 50 by the time of this remake, which is presumably why this time round he chose to play Ikuzo, the owner of the Anrakutei inn on a tiny island in Fukagawa (hence the title of Yamamoto’s story), rather than repeat his earlier part of Sadashichi the Indifferent, played effectively here by his student, the late Daisuke Ryu. 

Daisuke Ryu and Nakadai

 

One issue I have with Yamamoto’s story is that it rather wants to have its cake and eat it in the way we are expected to accept that a gang of hardened criminals turn into a bunch of sentimental softies as a result of hearing one hard-luck story. However, if you can swallow that and make allowances for the fact that this is not a 2-hour Masaki Kobayashi movie, but a 90-minute TV drama, this is a pretty decent effort. Having watched a few of Nakadai’s early ‘80s made-for-TV movies now, I’ve been quite impressed by how well-lit, shot and staged they are in comparison to the often visually drab television drama served up during this period in the West. The director for many of these was Akira Inoue (1928-2022), who had been a feature film director in the 1960s, making pictures such as Zatoichi’s Revenge (1965), but who worked mostly in television from the 1970s on. Nakadai is of course excellent as the philosophical father figure here, giving a mostly restrained performance until things heat up in the climax, when he even gets to engage in a little swordplay. 

Nakadai and Daisuke Ryu

 

Yasuko Miyazaki later adapted the story once more, this time for the theatre. It was first staged in 1997, a year after her death, with Nakadai again playing Izuko, and Nakadai has revived it several times since. 

Thanks to Samurai Vs Ninja for making this available on YouTube here.

Daisuke Ryu

 

Evening Stream / 夜の流れ / Yoru no nagare (aka The Lovelorn Geisha, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #75

 

Isuzu Yamada

Sonoda (Takashi Shimura) is a wealthy businessman who owns a restaurant run by Aya (Isuzu Yamada), whom he has repeatedly tried and failed to seduce. She’s actually having an affair with the cook, Igarashi (Tatsuya Mihashi), who has a foot injury as a result of being forced to work barefoot when he was a prisoner-of-war in Siberia. Aya’s daughter, Miyako (Yoko Tsukasa), is also in love with Igarashi but unaware of her mother’s affair. The restaurant has several geisha who entertain the guests. These include Kintaro (Yaeko Mizutani), who tends to get drunk a lot and is eventually raped in a car while intoxicated; Beniko (Etsuko Ichihara), who regularly attempts suicide for obscure reasons; and Masae (Mitsuko Kusabue), who has been left by her husband, Nozaki (Kazuo Kitamura), and is now in a relationship with a salesman (Akira Takarada, the heroic diver from the original Godzilla), although Nizaki keeps turning up to sponge off her.

 

Takashi Shimura

 

This Toho production is unusual in being a collaboration between two directors – Mikio Naruse and Yuzo Kawashima – and it seems to have come about as a result of Kawashima’s admiration for his senior colleague. Reportedly, Naruse directed most of the interiors in the studio, while Kawashima handled the scenes shot on location, and it certainly looks that way. As might be expected from this approach, there is a certain unevenness of tone. Kawashima’s opening scene set at a swimming pool suggests we’re in for a moronic sex comedy, but the film becomes more serious and interesting as it progresses. 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi

 

The geisha portrayed here are not the high-class prostitutes of period dramas, but simply female companions and entertainers for hire, which is what geisha had become by the time this film was made (it’s set in what was then the present day). Nevertheless, it’s surprising to see geisha emulating westerners on their days off. They ride around in American sports cars, go to jazz bars and drink highballs, and it’s made clear that their shamisen skills are somewhat lacking compared to the geisha of the past. In fact, their materialism, pursuit of pleasure and lack of spirituality are almost akin to the ‘sun tribe’ youths seen in films such as Crazed Fruit (1956). However, although these women seem pretty vacuous at first, they do become more sympathetic as the various sub-plots unfold, and Kintaro’s rebellion is gratifying when it comes. 

 

Kazuo Kitamura and Akira Takarada

 

The film was based on an original screenplay by frequent Naruse collaborator Toshiro Ide, and Zenzo Matsuyama, soon to become a director himself. It seems that Ide wrote the Naruse portions, while Matsuyama wrote Kawashima’s scenes. Each director also worked with a different cinematographer. I suspect that Naruse might have had an undeveloped, set-bound script by Ide on his hands and suggested that Kawashima add some exteriors showing what the women get up to on their days off (though this is pure speculation on my part). In any case, I felt that the Naruse scenes were stronger, though this might be partly due to the fact that he directed all the sections featuring Isuzu Yamada, who is exceptional. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another actor burst into real tears as suddenly as she does here. Yoko Tsukasa is equally convincing as her daughter, while Yaeko Mizutani proves herself the master of the drunk scene. The music score by Ichiro Saito features jazz guitar quite prominently and has not dated well, but on the whole this often maligned film rewards the patient viewer and is by no means the failure its reputation suggests. 

 

Yoko Tsukasa

 

Isuzu Yamada

Yaeko Mizutani